Move over, KFC. There’s a new chicken place in town and, frankly, it makes your product look scrawny.

The place is called the Chicken Coop, and you’ll find it tucked right next to the Webster Shoe Repair shop on South Ave. Owners Brandie Rauber and Christina Wasson opened the restaurant just after Thanksgiving and have been serving some down-home cooking six days a week ever since.

Trust me on how how good their food is. I know, because I sampled some of that chicken for dinner last night. (That is, if succumbing to the aroma and eating it straight from the box while steering with one hand down Ridge Road counts as “dinner.”)

The Chicken Coop is right next to the shoe repair shop on South Ave.

I had a chance to chat with Brandie last night as she worked in the restaurant kitchen, seasoning and marinating the next day’s batch of chicken. She told me a bit about her history, and what brought her and Christina to Webster four years ago. Before long, I got the distinct impression that it was only a matter of time before she wound up owning a restaurant.

“My family has been in the restaurant business since I was a kid,” Brandie said, and for a while she and her sister were thinking about opening their own place. When that didn’t happen, she put her dreams on the back burner. Then one day she and Christina tried to call their favorite Webster pizza joint, only to find out the phone number was disconnected and the business had closed. Not being the kind of person to “sit and wait for something to happen,” she decided to seize the opportunity. She rented that very same storefront, and finally opened her own restaurant.

Deciding what kind of restaurant it would be was pretty much a no-brainer. “Fried chicken has become sort of my signature thing,” Brandie said. And “everybody raves about my ribs.”

So that’s what you’ll find at the Chicken Coop: home-style fried chicken and ribs, with a nice selection of side dishes thrown in for good measure. You can choose from large orders for the whole “flock,” a kids’ menu for the “hatchlings,” chicken or rib dinners (complete with corn bread and three sides), and chicken sandwiches. They’ve also got wings on Wednesdays. Everything they serve is homemade, cooked to order and never frozen. I think that’s a big reason their meals in a box taste so much better than that stuff you get in a bucket. And by the way, the prices are quite reasonable (see the menu below).

Co-owner Brandie Rauber seasons and marinates the next day's chicken.

There’s a small dining area, so you can eat in if you want. But the place is really designed for take-out and delivery, for one simple reason: Brandie thinks that when you’re in the mood for take-out, it’s nice to have more options than just Chinese and pizza.

Brandie and Christina still work at other jobs full-time, which is why for right now, at least, the restaurant’s hours are limited to evenings and weekends. But they hope to eventually build the business to a point where they can quit their jobs. Brandie added that she’d even like to branch out into other communities.

From the response they’ve received from Webster so far, it sounds like they’re well on their way. “People have called back after they’ve finished their dinner to tell us how much they enjoyed it,” Brandie said. “They say, ‘We think you’re on to something, please stay in business.’”

email me at missyblog@gmail.com

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Missy Rosenberry, a graduate of Cornell University, spent many of her post-college years in radio, advertising and public relations. After taking most of the 1990s off to have her three children, she is now a full-time teaching assistant for the Webster school district, and a part-time karate instructor. She and husband Jack have lived in the Webster/Penfield area with the kids for 11 years. She'd like to use her blog to help others learn more about the Webster community.

Roderick Spratling is a husband and father of two who has lived in the community for over 18 years. Born and raised in Detroit, Spratling is a 1976 graduate of Michigan State University who earned a master’s degree in Manufacturing Management & Leadership from RIT in 2004. He’s a Purchasing Consultant in Global Purchasing for Xerox Corp., and he enjoys softball, bowling, photography, and traveling.